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In many situations, projects are so complex that the Projects may have as many as several thousand activities,
manager cannot possibly remember all the so project managers look for procedures that will help
them answer questions such as the following:
information pertaining to the plan, schedule, and
1. What is the total time to complete the project?
progress of the project.
2. What are the scheduled start and finish dates
for each specific activity?
In these situations the program evaluation and 3. Which activities are “critical” and must be
review technique (PERT) and the critical path completed exactly as scheduled in order to keep the
method (CPM) have proven to be extremely project on schedule?
valuable. 4. How long can noncritical activities be delayed
before they cause an increase in the total project
completion time?
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Network Optimization Models: PERT-CPM Project Scheduling With Known Activity Times
Project Scheduling With Known Activity Times The Concept of a Critical Path
The owner of the Western Hills Shopping Center is Note that the upper left-hand corner of each node
planning to modernize and expand the current 32- contains the corresponding letters. The activity time
business shopping center complex. The project is appears immediately below the letter.
expected to provide room for 8 to 10 new To determine the project completion time, we have to
businesses. Financing has been arranged through a analyze the network and identify alphabetic order
private investor. All that remains is for the owner of as we move from left to right what is called the
critical path for the network.
the shopping center to plan, schedule, and complete
the expansion project. However, before doing so, we need to define the
concept of a path through the network.
A path is a sequence of connected node network, that
leads from the Start node to the Finish node.
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All paths in the network must be traversed in order to Because an activity cannot be started until all
complete the project, so we will look for the path that immediately preceding activities have been finished, the
requires the most time. following rule can be used to determine the earliest start
Because all other paths are shorter in duration, this time for each activity.
longest path determines the total time required to The earliest start time for an activity is equal to the
complete the project. largest of the earliest finish times for all its immediate
If activities on the longest path are delayed, the predecessors.
entire project will be delayed. Thus, the longest path
is the critical path.
Continuing with this forward pass through the network, we
Activities on the critical path are referred to as the can establish the earliest start times and the earliest finish
critical activities for the project. times for all activities in the network.
We begin by finding the earliest start time and a Once the latest finish time for an activity is known, the
latest start time for an activity can be computed as
latest start time for all activities in network. Let follows. Let
ES = Earliest start time for an activity LS = latest start time for an activity
EF = Earliest finish time for an activity LF = latest finish time for an activity
then
t = activity time
LS=LF – t
The earliest finish time for an activity is The following rule can be used to determine the latest
finish time for each activity in the network.
EF = ES + t The latest finish time for an activity is the smallest of
the latest start times for all activities that
immediately follow the activity.
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After we have completed the forward and backward Step 1. Develop a list of the activities that make up
passes, we can determine the amount of slack the project.
associated with each activity.
Step 2. Determine the immediate predecessor(s) for
each activity in the project.
Slack is the length of time an activity can be the
activity can be delayed without increasing the project
completion time. The amount of slack for an activity is Step 3 Estimate the completion time for each activity.
computed as follows:
Step 4. Draw a project network depicting the
activities and immediate predecessors listed in steps I
Slack = LS – ES = LF – EF and 2.
In general, the critical activities are the activities with Step 5. Use the project network and the activity time
zero slack estimates to determine the earliest start and the
earliest finish time for each activity by making a
forward pass through the network. The earliest finish
The path formed by nodes A-E-F-G-I is the critical time for the last activity in the project identifies the
path in the Western Hills Shopping Center project total time required to complete the project.
network.
Step 6. Use the project completion time identified in
step 5 as the latest finish time for the last activity and
make a backward pass through the network to
identify the latest start and latest finish time for each
activity.
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Step 7. Use the difference between the latest start The H.S. DAUGHERTY COMPANY has manufactured industrial
vacuum cleaning systems for many years. Recently, a member
time and the earliest start time for each activity to of the company’s new product research team submitted a
determine the slack for each activity. report suggesting that the company consider manufacturing a
cordless vacuum cleaner. The new product research, referred
to as a Porta-Vac, could contribute to Daugherty’s expansion
into the household market. Management hopes that it can be
Step 8. Find the activities with zero slack; these are manufactured at a reasonable cost and that its portability
the critical activities. and no-cord convenience will make it extremely attractive.
Daugherty’s management wants to study the feasibility of
manufacturing the Porta-Vac product. The feasibility study
will recommend the action to be taken. To complete this study,
Step 9. Use the information from steps 5 and 6 to information must be obtained from the firm’s R & D, product
develop the activity schedule for the project testing, manufacturing, cost estimating, and market research
groups. The following table shows the relevant information for
the project:
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Once we have developed the project network, we To incorporate uncertain activity times into the
will need information on the time required to analysis, we need to obtain three time estimates for
complete each activity. each activity:
This information is used in the calculation of the total
time required to complete the project and in the Optimistic time; a = the minimum activity time if
scheduling of specific activities. everything progresses ideally
For repeat projects, such as construction and Most probable time; m = the most probable activity time
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This approach To illustrate the PERT/CPM procedure With uncertain activity times, we can use the variance
with uncertain activity times, let us consider the to describe the dispersion or variation in the activity
optimistic, most probable, and pessimistic time time values The variance of the activity time is given
estimates for the Porta –Vac activities as presented in by the formula.
Table 10.4.
ba
2
This average or expected time (t) is as follows: Large differences in these two values reflect a high
degree of uncertainty in the activity time. Using the
a 4m b earlier equation we obtain the measure of
t
6 uncertainty that is, the variance – of activity A,
denoted σ2A.
For activity A we have an average or expected time
of
12 4 8
2 2
A2 1.78
4 45 12 36 6 6
tA 6weeks
6 6
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We know that for the Porta-Vac project the critical Let T denote the total time required to complete the
path of A-E-H-I-J resulted in an expected total project. The expected value of T, which is the sum of
project completion time of 17 weeks. the expected times for the critical activities is
However, variation in critical activities can cause
variation in the project completion time. Variation in
noncritical activities ordinarily has no effect on the E(T) = tA + tE + tH + tI + tJ
project completion time because of the slack time =6+3+4+2+2
associated with these activities. = 17 weeks
However, if a noncritical activity is delayed long
enough to expend its slack time, it becomes part of a
new critical path and may affect the project
completion time.
Variability leading to a longer-than-expected total The variance in the project completion time is the sum
time for the critical activities will always extend the of the variances of the critical path activities. Thus,
project completion time. the variance for the Porta-Vac project completion
And conversely, variability that results in a shorter- time is 2 2 2 2 2 2
A E H I J
than-expected variance even if the total time for the = 1.78 + 0.11 + 0.69 + 0.03 + 0.11 = 2.72
critical activities will reduce the project completion
time, unless other expected times do not activities Knowing that the standard deviation is the square
become critical. root of the variance, we compute the standard
deviation σ for the Porta – Vac project completion
time as:
2.72 1.65
2
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